


A Hard Day's Night

by ilerya82



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilerya82/pseuds/ilerya82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long day deserves a little relaxation...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hard Day's Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the cs writing challenge on tumblr.

Emma sighed and leaned her head back against the door.  She was exhausted – 18 hours of ridiculous squabbles, drunk and disorderlies, and a case of vehicular herbicide was almost too much for her to bear.  At least there were no monsters – no magical big bads, no darkness, nothing really out of the ordinary for the last two months in Storybrooke. 

The apartment was silent as she toed off her boots, abandoning them one by one on her way to the living room.  Shrugging lazily out of each arm of her warm leather jacket, she rolled her neck to stretch out the knots and kinks that came with doing hours of paperwork before being able to go home.  The jacket found a home on the back of the sofa as she continued to pad down the hallway towards the bedrooms.  She’d wanted a nice relaxing evening at home with her boys, but with all the leftover paperwork to handle from the day’s events, Emma hadn’t even seen them for more than a few moments all day.  She didn’t like coming home this late – Storybrooke was a small, magical town.  There shouldn’t be any reason when there were no magical crises to keep her at the station past midnight, especially on nights that Henry was staying with them. 

Henry’s room was the first down the hallway.  They’d spent the first full day in the apartment painting – blues and greens and subtle shades of creamy beige throughout.  They’d left little markings throughout, just something to say ‘I was here’ to anyone who may happen to be here in the future.  Henry’s room had something like that.  They’d started by marking his height and the date on the edge of the door frame. 

_“I’ve always done this with you, do you remember?” Emma had murmured softly.  The memories of those years she hadn’t spent with her son still mingling with the truth of what had really happened._

_“Of course,” Henry smiled and stood a little straighter against the doorframe, “Just because that wasn’t how my life really happened Mom, doesn’t mean I want to forget it all.”_

Emma’s eyes were well adjusted to the darkness but as she peered in to Henry’s room she noticed he had fallen asleep on the floor by the foot of his bed, comic books open around him in various stages of critical analysis.  He was getting too big for this – she couldn’t lift him in to bed anymore like she could… Well, like she had in those memories that really shouldn’t have been there anyways, but that she treasured regardless. 

She moved in to the room, careful not to disturb his reading materials, and proceeded to pull the coverlet from his bed, tucking the duvet around him.  Henry stirred, but did not wake.  He simply gathered the ends of the duvet and made himself a fluffy pillow of its edges.  She brushed the hair from his brow before pressing her lips softly to it. 

“Goodnight my sweet, sweet boy.  I love you.”

She was getting better and better about saying that, that she loved people.  They had risked everything to bring her back to the light as heroes, so how could she not?  She did love them.  She wanted them to know that too.  Even if they were asleep when she said it, it still counted in her books.  They could hear her, she was sure that there had been scientific studies done somewhere about that… Or was that just coma patients?

Emma continued her trek down the hallway, towards the soft warm glow that was emanating from beneath the seal of the master bedroom door.  She smiled and thought of the man behind those doors.  He wasn’t a boy, no, but he had moments where his wonder of this world that he was living in and of the relationship that they forged together left him rather like a boy.  She understood his childlike wonder at the concept of belonging.  She’d felt it herself, still felt it sometimes when she thought of just how deeply her felt for her.  Love, true reciprocated love had been a foreign concept to Emma before he had come along. 

She reached for the door knob, peeked her head around the corner and she pushed in to the room.  The soft glow that she had seen was from dozens of candles lit about the room.  They hadn’t been lit long, her old fashioned romantic pirate, but the scents were intoxicating.  Vanilla, roses, lavender…. All her favourites, just like he always did.  Killian wasn’t anywhere to be seen though, which was confusing her a little more than she cared to admit. 

Frown lines creasing her forehead, she padded into the en suite bathroom where the same flickering glow of candlelight could be seen.  The frown quickly broke in to a grin when she saw her pirate lounging in the whirlpool tub, barely visible with a cluster of bubbles floating about his chest.  A book rested precariously in his hand as he used the hook to gingerly turn the page. 

“I’ve been wondering when you would arrive, love.  It’s been a long day, and I thought you could use a little relaxation.”

“I couldn’t agree more, pirate,” she teased as she pulled the t-shirt above her head.


End file.
